The field of the invention is lawn and garden equipment, and more particularly belt-driven attachments for such equipment.
Small scale tractors have provided residents of suburban and country areas with greater self-sufficiency, convenience and satisfaction by making it possible to maintain lawns, cultivate gardens and clear driveways of snow with a single mechanized system. Such tractors are typically offered with a variety of attachments for performing different jobs. The attachments can be bulky and are not always easy to install and change.
For example, a prior tiller attachment often required two people for positioning it behind a tractor. The attachment included several idler pulleys as part of a belt drive from an engine sheave on a tractor to a sheave on the tiller. After the tiller was positioned, the relatively long belt would be pulled forward from the tiller and installed on the engine sheave.
The tiller included a spring-loaded flat idler pulley to counter the tension of the belt, which was adjusted by repositioning a V-idler pulley. The repositioning mechanism was simply a slot in which a bolt mounting the V-idler pulley was loosened, moved, and then retightened using a hand tool. The idler pulleys were not easily accessible for placement of the belt. Thus, this prior attachment presented several disadvantages in installation.